For the last 5 years I’ve had the opportunity to attend SXSW in Austin, Texas.

More than 60,000 people annually attend the conference, which is consistently an overwhelmingly impressive display of up-and-coming technologies and inspirational industry thought leaders. This year, the two biggest highlights of the conference were enjoying creative culinary delights such as a burrito cooked by the Institute of Culinary Education chefs at the Watson Food Truck and having an opportunity to spend so much time with developers.

If you had a chance to interact with more than 10,000 developers at once what would you ask them? I spoke with hundreds of developers and asked them to tell me about how they are using cloud, mobile, big data and analytics to innovate, address business pain points or create the next big consumer app. For example, wearable technology such as clothing that uses, sensors to help better manage an individual’s health.

During SXSW I first met with designers and front-end developers at our BlueMix Blast! See this amazing team below!

In 2013, IBM unveiled a product design studio in Austin, which has brought together hundreds of designers and front-end developers to focus on how software is designed, developed and consumed by organizations around the globe. Next, I attended IBM’s BlueMix Party along with more than 400 developers looking for an opportunity to learn about BlueMix, IBM’s new platform-as-service (PaaS) that combines the strength of IBM software, third-party and open technologies.

What is BlueMix?

BlueMix is an open-standards, cloud-based platform for building, managing and running apps of all types (web, mobile, big data, new smart devices). Capabilities include Java, mobile backend development, application monitoring, as well as capabilities from ecosystem partners and open source — all through an as-a-service model in the cloud. When thinking about BlueMix, imagine tapping into DevOps in the cloud — an open, integrated development experience that scales, helping developers, independent firms and enterprise teams get started to build enterprise applications more quickly and effectively.

If you are curious about how BlueMix can help a business, check out this video conversation I recently had with Michael Garel, CEO and Founder of eyeQ, about customer engagement and how BlueMix allowed them to simplify and improve their development process:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7_UT02jVfQ

During my conversation with developers at SXSW three key points on the future of the developer and cloud ecosystem stood out to me:1. It’s all about the tools.
Developers today are always on the look-out to tap into systems and tools that simplify and reduce the time needed to create an application and to provision it so that they can focus on what they do best—innovating and developing top quality applications. By using the right tools that eliminate complexity, developers can quickly turn their ideas into shipped products fast and lower their time-to-market by cutting application development and deployment times from months to days and hours.2. Keep an open mind when it comes to open standards.
An open, flexible cloud environment connecting the enterprise and born-on-the-web developers using their choice of tools in a scalable model prevents vendor lock-in, accelerates innovation and fosters growth.3. The developer community keeps growing in size and creativity.
According to Evans Data, there are more than 18 million software developers worldwide yet less than 25 percent are developing for the cloud today. The developer population is expected to grow to 26.4M by 2016 and the parentage of developers expected to develop in the cloud will grow by 44% to 12.5M by 2019.

With new tools, ideas and processes being brought to the table every day, it’s an incredibly exciting time for developers to jump into the sandbox of their choice and start creating! To start experimenting with Bluemix today visit: https://www.ibmdw.net/bluemix/